The IDMf netlabel is proud to present When the Path Fades, a dark and compelling EP by Nyul

Guitars and pianos play wistful melodies behind haunting ambient tones. The EP contains no percussion, an artistic choice that would leave a lot of music sounding empty and directionless in its pace and rhythm, but works brilliantly for Nyul. Nothing is missing. Every sound and every note serves a purpose.

The music inspires a lot of imagery, partially through its attention to detail. A distant whistle behind a growling bass, noises with timbres that subtly change, all add to the nuances of the picture that is painted.

At times powerful and dramatic, at times minimal, calm, melancholy and sometimes totally still, When the Path Fades is beautiful in its melancholy. Dropping hints of post-rock onto a bed of dark and ambient electronica, it feels almost orchestral in its outlook.

What was the inspiration / motivation?
Was it your intention to make a record when you started?
How long did it take you?
Did you primarily use the setup you have pictured in the "Pictures of..." thread or did it change at all over the course of production?
What is the primary thing that you feel you're trying to communicate to the listener via these tracks?
Do you have a favorite?
And how did Mike come to master this?

Inquiring minds want to know all this, or I do at least, and anything else that can shed a little light on what's behind this release.

The community: it's thanks to you mad cunts that I made this music. Seriously, I've been on this place for like 2-3 years now and I've learned so much about both the technical side as the non-technical side of music. It's thanks to all of you that I encountered different kind of electronic music and learned so much of making music.
Thanks, IDMf is a pretty cool place

Nice release yo...damn there's so much music to catch up on around here. Really enjoying what I'm hearing so far, but ima sucker for anything with piano in it . Downloaded and ready for the weekend / the next rainy day.

Okay, I've written some answers...
Feel free to ask a clarification if something isn't clear.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RFJ

What was the inspiration / motivation?

My original motivation to make this record came out of frustration with myself: I was always busy with music, thinking about potential tracks and working on potential riffs, but I never did anything with it. I always thought of things I could perhaps do, but I never went through with them. This was because I didn't consider myself 'good enough' yet.
I was stuck for months thinking of things I could perhaps do, once I'm 'good' enough...

Until one day I said "fuck this" and decided to just do it. You can only learn from trying right?
I collected the ideas I thought were worth working on and limited myself to those 5 ideas until I finished the release. I dropped all expectations: I would just make whatever I wanted, without considering how cool it was or what it would end up being.
I quickly noticed how free this felt: it's great to make whatever feels right, without obligations. Once I got started I was motivated to complete this and kept on working.

My inspiration for this record is quite simple: me. During the making of my EP I lived day in day out with these tracks, they became the soundtrack of my life.
I had the habit to work on tracks in the evening/night and to put them on my iPod afterwards. The next day I would re-listen them while walking around to or from classes, this allowed me to continuously 'check' if I still liked what I was doing. When I was back home I improved it a bit more, tweaking it bit by bit.
So my inspirations are basically how I felt. Over time the tracks formed themselves to my emotions and thus effectively became a 'soundtrack' of my life.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RFJ

Was it your intention to make a record when you started?

Yeah, definitely. I picked those 5 ideas and set myself to complete them as one whole release. I came up with the flow I wanted to create quite soon and I've followed that concept until the end.
I never expected to be released under the IDMf Netlabel though

Quote:

Originally Posted by RFJ

How long did it take you?

The sudden change in mentality happened in January, I effectively started working on the EP from the beginning of February. It was finished in May when I made the final mix in the Audiolab (a studio I hired for a couple of hours). So 3-4 months.
This isn't completely correct though as all the tracks have a long history. When I started working on the EP I already had these basic ideas that I collected over the years. The oldest one being tilde '~' of which the piano riff is from my second track ever (about 3 years old). The newest idea was Floatfall, which was a very recent thing I was playing with.
Some ideas were already quite solid, I already had the whole arrangement for Water for example. Others were still pieces I somehow had to fit into each other, like TINEHFEITW.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RFJ

And how did Mike come to master this?

Well, that's kind of due to my impatience

After I finished my EP (in May) I submitted my tracks to the IDMf gmail under the motto "you can't lose by trying right?". Benwaa responded fast and said he'll get back to me in two weeks.
2-3 weeks later I sent a follow-up asking if he had checked them out. A couple of weeks later I still didn't get a response so I figured my material wasn't suited for the label (which is what I thought from the beginning tbh, an EP without drums on a IDMf... ).

So I went ahead and started organizing it myself. I didn't want to let it drag too long, I just wanted to get them out there as soon as possible (but with a proper release ofc). So I contacted Mike and asked if he was interested in mastering. And he was
Why Mike? Well I liked what he was doing with the AEP releases, he obviously knows what he is doing and (as a bonus) makes music with a very similar atmosphere ([Only registered and activated users can see links. Click here to register] is amazing).

A couple of days later Benwaa suddenly sent me an e-mail with a little surprise... we let Mike continue mastering as he was doing a damn fine job.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RFJ

Inquiring minds want to know all this, or I do at least, and anything else that can shed a little light on what's behind this release.

Thanks Nyul, I love the insight. Your work becoming your own soundtrack is something I can very much identify with. After reading all that I do have one more question about the studio space you rented for the mixdown...

I take it that being as you would write then listen away from your workspace later on that many issues in the mix were sorted out due to the 2nd or 3rd system checks. How much work had to be done once you got it into the studio and heard it in a proper room with quality monitoring?

What is the primary thing that you feel you're trying to communicate to the listener via these tracks?

Well this EP is made for me in the first place, so nothing actually.
I never thought about communicating certain concepts, for me it was just about making the music that I wanted to make. About expressing my own emotions for myself.
There are a lot of concepts and feelings attached to the music for me, each track has its own set of thoughts I link with them. So the release contains a concept, but only for me. It is not my intention to share that specific concept with my listeners.

Instead, all I want is to share this music, which contains a certain flow of emotions. What these emotions mean, how they fit together is something the listener should define for themselves.
It's basically a blank slate on which the listener can write his own story.

So if someone sends me that they liked my EP because it made them feel a certain way, then that's cool, that's all I want.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RFJ

Do you have a favorite?

Hmm, not really, I like every track. They all mean a lot to me in their own specific way, every track has had their own window in time in which I solely focused on it. I work on a track until I like every aspect of it, until I don't want to change anything anymore. So every track is a kind of 'me'.
I also prefer to listen to them all after each other, they are one tight collection in my mind. The end of one track naturally feels like the beginning of the next one.

I have a couple of specific moments that I really like how they turned out though, like the de-tuning delays in TINEHFEITW (that tracktitle is way too long to write out every time ).
I was really getting into the Simple delay effect of Live: it's great to add a wide delay, but it's even more fun to mess with really short delay times.
The squeaky pads that fade-in at 05.03 are affected by a very short delay (~20ms I think) with high feedback, creating very weird alternating noises. I just love how they sound so irregular.
The harsh distorted sound you hear when the track fades out is created by putting two simple delays in series after each other, both with short delay times (~80ms) and very high feedback (~90%). The sounds that came out of that thing were incredible and totally unexpected

There are a lot of small things that I really like how they turned out, like in Water at 03.57 that high sound that 'flies by'. A lot of little details were happy accidents that I refined a bit and I just love focusing on them every time, they are all little imperfections I've grown completely familiar with.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RFJ

Thanks Nyul, I love the insight. Your work becoming your own soundtrack is something I can very much identify with. After reading all that I do have one more question about the studio space you rented for the mixdown...

I used a lot of software because it fits perfectly with my workflow: it allows me to continuously tweak bits until it sounds exactly as I want. For me, making a track is not about that one burst of inspiration, it's a long journey (spanning weeks) of tweaking what you have until it's exactly what you want. This is very easy to do with software (thanks to automation) but not with hardware.
I actually found hardware recordings to be very limiting. I like to create a constant movement through my track, elements loop but never sound exactly the same. If I wanted to do this with external hardware (like my bass guitar for example) I would have to record the perfect take in one go, this is especially hard if you're not sure yet how the track will progress. Once it's recorded you can't change it anymore, it is not possible to change the strumming or the notes of a recorded track. It's frozen in place and I don't like that.

Plugin-wise I used almost only Live built-in plugins combined with a couple of free ones.Operator (a 4 oscillator FM synthesizer) is my go to sound source and my most used effect is probably Simple delay (a simple stereo delay). Other unmissable devices were the M4L LFO-device and EQ8 of course.
I especially like how it's very easy to stack effects in Live: you can combine a lot of small blocks to create the sound exactly as you want it and still have a decent overview.
A couple of non-Ableton plugins I used were: TAL-Chorus, FreeverbToo and GSinth2.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RFJ

I take it that being as you would write then listen away from your workspace later on that many issues in the mix were sorted out due to the 2nd or 3rd system checks. How much work had to be done once you got it into the studio and heard it in a proper room with quality monitoring?

Mixing for me is something I do very intuitively. I've read some texts on how you should use mixing effects, I keep that in my mind but I usually just follow my intuition. I picked up a couple of 'rules' by hanging out with you guys but I also 'break' them whenever I feel it might sound better.
Mixing happens on the go, I design sounds based upon what purpose they have and I tweak them until I like how it fits in the overall picture. If I don't like it at a later stage I'll just tweak it some more, which is very easy thanks to software.
A lot of notes for myself were about certain elements not sounding 'right' yet (a bit too sharp, a bit too wide etc), by always re-listening to my tracks I could pick up every imperfection and fix them over time.

Re-listening to my tracks away from my workspace actually happened with the same headphones (my trusty old pair ), so I used just one sound system. I've used this pair for 3-4 years now though and I listen music with them day in day out. So yeah, I guess I am quite used to them.

Re-listening in a different environment really helps to get a better view of what you're doing though. When you work in your DAW you have this visual structure in front of you: you see your track as a collection of clips divided in different sections. When you re-listen outside you only hear a single stream of sound. This helped me to create very flowing music (which is quite important for me).
Also hearing your tracks in a different environment really helps you to re-think them: how you experience music depends on how you feel and what you experience around you (visually and physically). Hearing it in a different way helps me to pick up different things.
When I re-listened I also sandwiched them between inspiring records like [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click here to register] and [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click here to register].
So yeah, re-listening is quite an important part of my process. That would be my tip to anyone making music: go for a walk, listen to what you're actually making and write down what you think.

After I finished all the tracks, I wanted to check everything a last time in a professional environment. It's not that I didn't trust my headphones, I know them inside-out, but I was afraid the low-end wasn't totally neutral and wanted to do a final check.
So I hired this studio, the Audiolab, for 4 hours. I've posted a blurry picture here: [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click here to register]

I was surprised with how good the monitors sounded (never used monitors before): the bass was present but not overwhelming and everything just sounded wider and kind of more open. Not sure how I should describe it but it was a very nice experience.
When I listened to my tracks I was overwhelmed by how good they sounded, it was amazing to hear my tracks in such detail.
I did not have to do a lot of tweaking, I fixed the bass a bit (they were a bit loud and messy) and EQ'd some details I didn't hear before. I was actually afraid the mix would be quite bad and that I would need multiple sessions to fix it, but that was not the case.
I'm not saying my mix is perfect (if that is even possible), but it sounds 'right' and exactly like I want it to sound.
After I made these final tweaks my EP was done, I rendered the tracks and closed the project files.

A final word of thanks to you Nyul for the fantastic insight on everything that lies behind your release, really enjoyed reading all of that over the last couple of days. Wish Q & A's like that happened more often actually. With the ease of which they can be accomplished it's a shame they don't.

Of all the things you said I think it is this one line I identified with the most...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nyul

For me, making a track is not about that one burst of inspiration, it's a long journey (spanning weeks) of tweaking what you have until it's exactly what you want.

I would very much like to have something to jam around on and scratch out ideas. But, I think the process of trackmaking will always be similar for me, to the way in which you describe it is for you in the quote above.

Many thanks for taking the time to reply and congrats again on your release.

A final word of thanks to you Nyul for the fantastic insight on everything that lies behind your release, really enjoyed reading all of that over the last couple of days. Wish Q & A's like that happened more often actually. With the ease of which they can be accomplished it's a shame they don't.

It was a pleasure, you've asked really good questions. Thank you for that
I'd love to see more listener - artist interaction. These are things I often wonder about: why do artist make the music they do? Why do they share it? How did they feel when they made it and what do they want to communicate? Similar for the listeners: how do they feel due to the music and what does it mean for them?
Everyone interprets music differently and I would love to see more discussions on this kind of stuff.